Trekking in Chiang Dao - Day 1

... and we're back to our regularly scheduled program!

So where was I? Oh yes, Thailand. Still.

On our third day in Chiang Mai, I dragged my sorry butt out of bed at sunrise for an early morning pick up by our guide for a three-day trek through Chiang Dao. At 7 am, the hotel lobby was already bustling with people waiting for their guided tours. We milled around for forty-five minutes looking like lost children waiting to be claimed. When Giles started to scare some of the hotel patrons by running up to them with a paper sign and eagerly exclaiming, “Are you Chiang Dao Nest Trek?” Charlotte finally called the tour company.

Giles asking, "Are you my tour guide?"

It turned out that the guide had come but picked up the wrong five people. While we waited for him to come back to the hotel, Charlotte wondered aloud, “What’s the chance that another group of five with one member by the name of Charlotte signed up for a three-day trek in Chiang Dao on the same day?”

Well, that chance was actually zero. Although the guide was supposed to look for Charlotte, he somehow kept asking for someone named Sam. And it just so happened that a family of five – a man by the name of Sam, his wife, and three young children – were standing in the lobby when the guide came by earlier. They climbed into the tuk tuk thinking it was a taxi going into town. In the tuk tuk were a young Australian couple – Luke and Tanya – who were also going on the trek. After a brief conversation, Luke and Tanya realized that the family had gotten into the wrong vehicle. They suggested to Sam and his wife that they inform the driver, but strangely, they just shrugged it off until an hour into the ride when the tour office finally called the driver on his cell phone and asked him to turn around.

After over two hours of waiting, our van finally pulled up in front of the hotel. Sam, his wife, and their kids jumped out and we climbed in. Tired and hungry, we all looked like a herd of cattle being carted off to the slaughterhouse. We mostly sat in silence during the two-hour ride but perked up when we arrived at our destination and were greeted by the trekking company owner who fed us breakfast.

Chiang Dao Nest Headquarters

The first official activity of the trek was cave exploration. We were introduced to our first guide – Nada – who handed each of us a hard hat and a bottle of water before taking us on a 15-min walk to the cave. The cave was dark and low and narrow in some spots, requiring us to crawl on our stomachs.

Charlotte maneuvering through a tight spot like a pro

Half a dozen times after squeezing through some tight openings, I’d try to warn the person behind me of upcoming dangers by saying, “Hey, be careful over here. Watch out for the [insert death-causing hazard here]” and before I can finish, I’d bash my head against some low hanging rock ahead of me. All I can say is, thank god for hard hats. Without them, I’d be a sitting vegetable right now.

Making new friends along the way

In the late afternoon, after a trek up to a waterfall, we headed to a small village where we had dinner and spent the night in a hut. I don’t know if it’s based on past experience of previous tourists or the general perception of westerners, but whereas the people in every village we visited seemed to eat modestly, our trekking group was offered an obscene amount of food at every meal. It was like if we each didn’t consume – or at least offered – a minimum of ten pounds of rice, meat, and vegetables at every sitting, we would somehow spontaneously combust. I wanted to dispel any Thai notions of western tourists as gluttons, but I also knew that any leftover food would be thrown away. This put me in a real quandary. Should I binge or harbor guilt for wasting food while millions of children in third world countries starved to death? It was a tough choice. My solution? I sat at the table with Giles for two hours and engaged in an eating marathon that ended just short of intestinal eruption, and then fed some leftovers to a hungry kitten that had shown up at our table uninvited.

The view from our first village at sunset

After dinner, we joined our village hosts and guides around a bonfire. Northern Thailand in the month of December turns frigid at night. I was unaware of this critical information when I packed for my month long trip and hence failed to bring anything warmer than a pair of Capri pants and a long-sleeved hiking shirt. As I sat shivering in front of the fire, one of the women in the village asked Charlotte, Caryn, and me if we wanted to try on some traditional Thai dresses.

She led us into a hut and pulled out dresses for each of us. We put them on and walked back to the bonfire. One of the village men pulled out a traditional northern Thai wind instrument and as he played it, the rest of us linked arms and danced around in a circle until we got dizzy and tired. That was when the party ended and those of us who hadn’t gone to bed yet turned in for the night.

Don't say it - I already know that I look frumpy in that dress.

Chimps are Plotting World Domination

Chimpanzees (mostly females) in West Africa have been spotted fashioning spears out of wood to hunt and kill small prey. According to an article in the Washington Post, it is the "first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than humans." This is both fascinating and frightening to me. I'm loathe to think what might be next. Before we know it, these chimps will be forming tribes, competing for pieces of flint in their loin cloths, and then voting their least competent members off a remote island somewhere.

And after a few years they'll realize that's just too much work, so they'll emulate the already highly evolved domestic feline and turn into couch potatoes.



So this post is just me procrastinating yet again from writing about the rest of my travels over break. Maybe I'll get back on track by the end of the weekend...